Formlessness, me and the walls of Encouragement. What does the body experience in performance art?

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What remains when an image ceases to be just an image? A trace of movement, light, memory, or maybe an experience stored in the body? During the workshop we will look at the meeting of Eastern and Western cultures and how Zen philosophy, its body practices and aesthetics have influenced the development of performance and contemporary visual arts.

The starting point is João Maria Gusmão's exhibition In the Footsteps of the White Tiger and the tensions present in the artist's work between materiality and imagination, movement and immobility, strength and fragility, visible and hidden. We will also look at the term “paper tiger,” popularized by Chinese leader Mao Zedong in reference to American imperialism and the nuclear threat of the Cold War, which became a starting point for reflection on the appearance of strength versus actual fragility. We will be inspired by the works of artists who have engaged in dialogue with these cultures in different ways — Jerzy Grotowski, Joseph Beuys, Meredith Monk or Min Tanaki.

The final of the workshop will be a group performance in which the participants will try to translate into body language and actions the themes of the exhibition: trace, transformation, memory, technique, nature, strength, fragility, movement and lack thereof. Through Zen-inspired exercises, the practice of kinhin, butoh and the methods of Grotowski's work, we will experience the body as a tool of cognition. We will work with breath, mindfulness, touch, voice, space and slow movement, looking for what appears between control and letting go, action and immobility. There will also be no shortage of experiments with matter, imagination and joint action.

Duration: 2 hours
hosted by: Sandra Mierzejewska

Sandra Mierzejewska — artist, educator, performer. Filmmaker by education — at heart a person who works in many fields of art, including visual arts, music, dance. She began her activities in the field of performance and body work during acting and musical activities. She played in debut etudes (among others: Leben by Anna Płonki, 2024), appreciated at Polish film festivals such as New Horizons or the Festival of Polish Feature Films in Gdynia. Winner of singing competitions and acting song. In his educational practice, he uses his own interdisciplinarity as a tool for creating encounters from which each person instills the need for further creation and faith in the power of his artistic practice.